Olive Mennonite Church (Olive Township, Elkhart County, Indiana, USA)

Olive Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church), formerly called the Shaum congregation, a member of the Indiana-Michigan Conference, is located in Olive Township, Elkhart County, Indiana, 5 miles (8 km) north of Wakarusa, 1 mile (1.5 km) south of Jamestown, and 8 (13 km) miles southwest of Elkhart. Before 1861-1862, the date of the erection of their first Mennonite meetinghouse in this area, the congregation worshiped in a log building along Baugo Creek about one-half mile north of the present meetinghouse. The first preachers were in the Elkhart County Circuit, the center of which was Yellow Creek. Daniel Moyer (1812-1864), originally of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, moved from Ashland County, Ohio, to a farm west of Jamestown in 1848. He was killed in a train wreck near Hillsdale, Michigan on a preaching trip to Canada on 21 December 1864. Daniel Brenneman served in the Yellow Creek Circuit for ten years, until his expulsion in 1874. In 1871 Henry Shaum (1826-1892) was ordained preacher at Olive, and Henry Christophel deacon. In 1888 a new brick meetinghouse was built, which was rebuilt in 1948. In 1896 Jacob Shank (d. 1905), a son of Michael Shank, a preacher living at Lakeville, St. Joseph County, Indiana and the father of Clarence Shank (ord. 1917), a retired preacher of the congregation, was ordained preacher at Olive. In 1908 the congregation imported D. A. Yoder, a young preacher, from the nearby Holdeman congregation to serve as pastor. In 1910 he was ordained bishop. In 1951 J. C. Wenger, in the North Goshen congregation, was called as pastor and ordained bishop here in place of D. A. Yoder, who was retired at that point, and Elno Steiner, the pastor in 1957, was ordained to the ministry. The membership in 1957 was 260. In 1933 the Olive Mennonite Church established a mission outpost at Crumstown, which later became independent, and in 1950 at Hudson Lake near New Carlisle, Indiana. The deed for the land on which the church stands was granted by Jacob and Mary Shaum to "The Old Menonite Church" in 1872, ten or more years after the erection of the meeting house. Olive is said to have had the first Mennonite Sunday school in Indiana, the organizer being John F. Funk.